SingHealth Tissue Repository (STR) facilitates the conduct of basic, translational and clinical research at SingHealth and Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School. It is the largest research tissue repository in Singapore.
Headed by a pathologist, STR is guided by the SingHealth Tissue Repository Committee, which comprises clinicians practising in major hospitals in Singapore, research scientists as well as lawyers and the Chairman of the
Centralised Institutional Review Board, on development and implementation of biospecimen banking policies and guidelines. The committee also works with STR to review and approve requests to collect and access specimens.
STR aims to:
- Provide a well-managed tissue repository for all researchers in SingHealth and Singapore by focusing on data security, quality assurance and ethical standards
- Ensure proper harvesting, processing and storage of tissues and biospecimens in accordance with national guidelines and international best practices
- Encourage collaboration and synergies in research efforts by providing a platform for researchers to share resources and experiences
- Provide tissue-based research services and engage in R&D for tissue preservation techniques and research resource management
In line with SingHealth's strategy to promote collaborations for medical advancement, STR hopes to support collaboration between SingHealth principal investigators and international researchers by providing high quality, internationally-accredited, tissue-based research services.
To view the brochure of STR, please click here.
For a list of SingHealth Core Platforms Equipment, click here.
Services
STR offers researchers and their collaborators two types of services:
Core tissue research services
SingHealth research partners can access tissue-related research services, such as provision of cryostat sections, tissue processing, histochemical stains, immunohistochemistry, laser microdissection, interphase FISH and immunoFISH assays to validate biomarkers on tissues, construction of tissue microarray (TMA), and provision of thick tissue sections for DNA/RNA integrity assessment.
Click here for enquiries on Core Tissue Research Services.
Biobanking services
STR’s biobank supports both scheduled and unscheduled collections. Serving as a ‘hostelling service’ for researchers who require a facility to process and store bio-resources for the duration of their projects, a scheduled collection includes harvesting of tissue and/or processing blood samples.
An unscheduled collection involves regularly harvesting tissues, mainly malignancies, from consenting patients who undergo surgery, regardless of whether there is an ongoing study. These samples go into STR’s tissue bank.
For charges on Biobanking services, please email STR at
tissue.repository@singhealth.com.sg
Application process for request of tissue samples
Step 2: Application
together with a copy of approval letter
by Centralised Instiutional Review Board (CIRB)
Step 3: Review by the STR Committee
This normally takes about 14 working days
Rejection
You may reapply with a revised proposal that addresses the reviewers' concerns. These usually relate to: insufficient justification for number of samples requested; or lack of justification for the types of samples requested
Approval & start of project
We’ll arrange a date for you to collect the tissue material from us and invoice you for the withdrawal
Application process for scheduled collections
Step 1: Enquiry
after which we will arrange a meeting to discuss your project further
Step 3: Review by the STR Committee
This normally takes about 14 working days
Rejection
You may reapply with a revised proposal that addresses the reviewers' concerns. These usually relate to: insufficient justification for number of samples requested; or lack of justification for the types of samples requested
Approval & start of project
We will go ahead with the sample collection as specified in the protocol and invoice you for the storage and processing
Contributing tissues to STR's tissue bank
Individual clinicians or departments can contribute tissues to STR. Simply submit the completed Request to Initiate New Collection form to any STR staff or directly to Elsie Kok, STR Senior Medical Technologist. Once the agreement is set up, STR staff will approach your patients before surgery to obtain consent and harvest tissues after in the operating theatre.
STR encourages PIs who request contributed tissues to collaborate with the contributing clinicians or departments and offer authorship on publications resulting from this research.
